What’s your favourite word?

Aasma Day

Words are wondrous things aren’t they? It never ceases to amaze me how 26 letters can be strung together in so many different ways to conjure up such a variety of emotions.

As someone whose livelihood depends on them, I am only too aware of how words can do everything from inspiring greatness to inciting hatred.

The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare, attributed to John Taylor. Picture National Portrait Gallery ... Shakespeare invented many of the words (or gave them new uses) we use today, such as cold-blooded and dwindle

Words – both in the written and verbal forms – can heal, they can hurt, they can make you laugh or cry and they can build bonds and break down ignorance.

Collectively, words are undoubtedly marvellous and can be life-changing.

But individual words can be just as phenomenal and some of us even have our favourite words because we like the way they sound or flow off the tongue.

Some of my own personal favourites include: “bombarded”, “kerfuffle”, “shenanigans” – because it just sounds so naughty – “agog”, “murmuring”, “festooned” and “razzmatazz”.

It seems I’m not alone in having words I like a lot as a quick straw poll around the office revealed a myriad (now there’s another good word!) of super sounding words.

One colleague loves “discombobulate”, while another is fond of “flabbergasted” and someone else offered up “quintessential.”

But who says we have to contain ourselves to words that actually exist as some of the best ones are the made-up ones.

My favourite childhood author Roald Dahl was the master of the made-up word. He created brilliant words such as “scrumdiddlyumptious”, “Oompa Loompa”, “gobblefunk” and “snozz-cumber”.

Personally, I believe the world needs more made-up words and we all need to come up with a few new ones that should be included in the dictionary.

Some of the more hilarious suggestions I’ve heard are: “Textpectation” to mean: “The anticipation experienced while waiting for a text message to arrive” and “Cashtration”: the act of buying a house which renders a person financially impotent.”

I also like “Chairdrobe” and “Floordrobe”: “The act of piling clothes on a chair or on the floor instead of in a wardrobe. I have a few of those myself!

The changing world has spawned all sorts of new words and as far as I’m concerned, that’s “Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious!”